Romanticism In The Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe is a popular American writer and a central figure of romanticism in the United States. Poe presented many short stories; he is the first famous American to try to live by writing alone. One of his notorious short story’s is The Black Cat. He presented this short story on The Saturday Evening Post. Poe’s motive for writing this short story was to study the mindset of violence of a disturbed human being. In this short story some of Poe’s thoughts and visual imagery help him paint a full picture of Pluto, alcoholism, and depravity. First, a section of Poe’s thoughts and use of visual imagery helps him describe his cat Pluto. From the short story it says, “This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree” (Poe 435). He describes Pluto as a beautiful large black cat, however he makes note that all black cats are “witches in disguise”. He says the word witches because he is now labeling all black cats to be evil and are bad luck. Also, the short story says, “I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the …show more content…
The purpose of this short story was to study the mindset violence of a disturbed human being. In this short story he uses visual imagery as a literary element to get his points across. Visual imagery is used to illustrate a full picture of Pluto, alcoholism, and depravity. He describes Pluto as a large black beautiful animal, a witch in disguise, and as his sidekick. He then describes alcoholism as a violent drunk, malevolence, and having a lost soul. Next, he then describes depravity as unpleasant, fascinating, and as a liability. Edgar Allan Poe story The Black Cat had a positive and negative effect among people, this will always be one of his most notorious short stories of all